Just as we were all getting over the first teaser, news emerged today that a special preview would air on Dave during Taskmaster, foreshadowing the handover of the “most popular show on Dave” mantle, due to take place in just over three weeks’ time. The “preview” terminology left us a little unsure what to expect, but we’re definitely in full-blown trailer territory here – forty seconds long, loads of previously unseen clips, a classic rock soundtrack and even a specially-created graphics package in the middle.

Having aired once more during another Dave original, Porters, the trailer then turned up online, albeit in optimised-for-social-media format, with subtitles and big chunky borders to make it square. Worse still, there’s a fairly substantial change to the soundtrack, which we’ll come to later. There’s no sign of a nice official 16:9 version yet, so the screengrabs below are taken from a slightly inferior-quality TV rip. (UPDATE:UKTV have uploaded a lovely high-quality YouTube version. All screengrabs have therefore been upgraded.) Let’s take our customary closer look…

The trailer opens with the slowed-down piano version of the theme that accompanied the initial teaser. The first shot is similar too, except here it seems to be a longer version of the same model shot, but with quick fades to and from black a couple of times to punch in on the nameplate, in time to the first three notes of the theme tune. Lovely stuff.

This is then followed by Starbug in the landing bay! As we were informed by the Series XI DVD, this is a shot they initially attempted for that series but then abandoned, so it’s great that it’s seen the light of day this time round.

Meanwhile, inside Starbug, Lister proceeds starting her up (he definitely says “starting”, despite what the subtitles on the social media version say), by…

…giving the console a little punch, causing it to light up. This also cues the unmistakable riff of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, which plays for the remainder of the trailer and is an inspired choice, driving a fast pace and setting an upbeat tone. It’s such a shame that in the online version, it’s replaced by a pale library imitation, as so much of the mood is dictated by the music. It’s understandable though – any commercial music is expensive and difficult to clear for online use. The broadcast version must be considered the definitive edition of this trailer.

Anyway, back in the landing bay, Starbug takes off…

…with Cat shouting “here we go” as they speed away from Red Dwarf…

…and towards some sort of moon or asteroid. You can see here that Starbug has one of its back lights missing, which is something we first saw on a storyboard, back in February 2016. We therefore know that it’s from the episode recorded third, which all current evidence indicates will be the first to air.

We then cut to what certainly looks like Sunbury Pump House, or a very close approximation. Those green pipes are the giveaway. Two mechanoids are fighting it out in the middle of the Justice Zone, and on closer inspection…

…we see that one of them is the Listerbot, wielding a mop. I’m pretty sure that’s Lister anyway – it still doesn’t look much like Craig, but it does look like the Craig droid in this picture, although much less pale on screen. It’s at this point, in the broadcast version at least, that one of Danny’s “yooooowwwwww”s is mixed with Robert Plant’s. This is a fantastic touch, and kudos to Paul Muller for spotting it.

We then see Rimmer dissolving away, which seems to happen at least once in most of the Dave era trailers. This time, he spirals into his light bee, before we cut to:

Little bios for each of the crew! This is something that – in this form at least – is being used for the first time in an official Dwarf trailer, as far as I recall. It’s a good idea; for the casual audience, the fact that it’s the same four people they remember from the olden days is one of the main draws, so it’s nice to take a moment to re-establish them all. Each of them is presented in the form of a short clip from the series, with accompanying graphics and voiceover.

And yes, of course we’re going to pick apart the captions. “Dave Lister ‘Cinzano Bianco'”? That’s not how nicknames work. I’d have preferred “David David Lister” anyway, and would have accepted “Human (Barely)” as the species.

Well, I wouldn’t say “correcting people” is something Kryten likes doing. It’s just something he has to do quite a bit, and he often feels guilty about it. And I simply don’t understand Kryten’s full name being “Additional”. His full name is Kryten 2X4B-523P, as everyone with even a passing interest in Red Dwarf knows, with the obvious exception of Robert Llewellyn himself when he was writing Beyond A Joke. Unless the “Additional” thing is a reference to something from XII, I’m baffled.

The Cat seems to have less information than anyone else, which reflects either the more enigmatic aspect of his character, or a lack of research from whoever put the captions together. Does he “like” mice, though? I thought that cats and mice were notoriously antagonistic towards each other, unless Tom & Jerry and Itchy & Scratchy are lying to us.

So close to perfection. The choice of insults are great because they’re not necessarily the obvious ones, and I like the bluntness of his “status”. The name could do with some initials after it, but they’re not essential. The glaring, obvious, schoolboy error, though? It’s “Zed Shift”, not “Z Watch”. I put my foot through the television and I’ll be sending Dave the bill.

Back to the action, and it’s an earlier moment from a shot that was featured in the teaser, with the big scary ship turning its tractor beam on to ensnare Starbug.

Then our first glimpse of Chris Barrie’s Rimmerbot in action, and unsurprisingly, his rubberised face is just as distinctive and excellent when it’s moving. This shot confirms that it’s some sort of conversion machine that turns the crew into Krytens, and furthermore that it appears to be based on a salon hairdryer.

Then there’s some transmat action, with Rimmer and Cat beaming down to join Kryten. The clinical white location that we’ve seen elsewhere, coupled with the big “M”-shaped logos everywhere, certainly seem to point towards which episode this is.

Then a moment that you can’t help grinning at – the “Boys From The Dwarf” hand gesture, for the first time since Demons & Angels. And Rimmer seems just as uncomfortable with it now as he was then. It’s such an iconic moment from the original series, despite it only appearing a handful of times, and it’s a callback designed simply to please long term fans.

Then the exact same shot of Rimmer/Blofeld/Dr Evil from the teaser, before…

…Lister and Cat on a greenscreen gas moon, wearing very Space: 1999-esque helmets. I love the use of the ancient JMC mountains logo on the spacesuits.

Rimmer has decided to name this gas moon “Rimmer”, and he looks very smug as he does so.

Lister responds with the full Rimmer salute, before pointing out how Rimmer is full of gas. An obvious joke, but just look at that beautiful flag!

I love this trailer, and the reaction I’ve seen online has been almost entirely positive too. It’s a bit of a shame that there aren’t more jokes in there, but really, it’s all about the mood that it sets, and it makes the forthcoming series look fun, exciting and varied. Besides, there are presumably more variants of this trailer on the way, so it could well be that more funny stuff is being lined up for later use. Remain vigilant, people.

92 Responses to Red Dwarf XII Trailer Analysis

It’s a bit of an obvious joke yes, but it’s still funny. I’m pumped. There’s so much beautiful imagery in here, the hangar bay, the tractor beam, the Kryten death match, the space suits. It almost looks bigger than XI.

At the sake of being named in the like position among the correcting ranks, isnt “additional” part of kryten’s ship log on in Inquisitor? Still not as good as using his 2x4b etc.

Having just rewatched it, this is what’s said:
HOLLY: “Please state your name and clearance code.”
KRYTEN: “Logon name: Kryten. Registration code: Additional zero zero
one.”
I took that to mean that “Additional zero zero one” is his clearance code for CPU access as it comes right after Lister saying:
“Lister, D. Treble zero, one six nine.”.

TOS states on the About Crew page: “The mechanoid Kryten (full name Kryten 2X4B-523P… but he hates the “jerky” middle name)…”

Lovely teaser, beautiful effects – just praying to Grud almighty that the jokes will be served up. Actually not jokes – wit. Because I believe there is a difference: ‘You can’t have a been a full member of the golf club then’ is wit. ‘Less choice than a Welsh fish and chip shop’ is a joke. And not a hugely funny one. Anyways, off to open another door of my hand-made Red Dwarf series XII advent calendar…

The roll call with the readouts plus the classic rock seems to be cribbing from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is an interesting (and marketable) comparison to draw.

Or even more specifically: the first trailer for Thor Ragnarok featured Immigrant Somg and has the film’s logo appear in exactly the same way as it does here. A nice little homage, and quite a canny move to change the logo style for the version that doesn’t have the song.

Now available on YouTube, with 100% more Immigrant Song than your regular online version:

EDIT: OK, I didn’t realise it would embed, I thought it would just link to it. And I’m not sure how to fix it to make it fit in the post properly. If it’s annoying, just press play to distract yourself from it, it’s got Immigrant Song in it, y’know.

Presuming we’re correct in what we think the recording order of XII was, then the recording order of the entire block was: Give and Take, Can of Worms, Krysis, Officer Rimmer, Samsara, Twentica, Siliconia, Timewave, Cured, Mechocracy, M-Corp, Skipper.

OK, I just noticed in the comments of another post that someone didn’t link to this for legal reasons and now I’m worried, I didn’t realise it might cause problems, but now I can’t edit my post, my bad, sorry, please don’t sue anyone.

Presuming we’re correct in what we think the recording order of XII was, then the recording order of the entire block was: Give and Take, Can of Worms, Krysis, Officer Rimmer, Samsara, Twentica, Siliconia, Timewave, Cured, Mechocracy, M-Corp, Skipper.

As far as I can remember the actual recording order was OH GOD, ARGHH AGAIN, FUCK ALREADY, SO TIRED NOW, MORE BEER PLEASE, YAY 1920S, JANUARYFUCKFUCK, SEND COFFEE, THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY TO LIGHT THIS CORRIDOR, THERE WASN’T and ALL THE BEERS NOW

Thanx! I’ll stick it out for the TV I think, if I can restrain myself ;-)

I really wish I could wait for the TV broadcast. Damn you UKTV Play!

As far as I can remember the actual recording order was OH GOD, ARGHH AGAIN, FUCK ALREADY, SO TIRED NOW, MORE BEER PLEASE, YAY 1920S, JANUARYFUCKFUCK, SEND COFFEE, THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY TO LIGHT THIS CORRIDOR, THERE WASN’T and ALL THE BEERS NOW

I almost spat coffee on my laptop. Bless you and thank you for all the hard work and stress Ed!

Is there any chance that UKPlay are going to increase the streaming quality? I remember last time it was pretty awful even on a laptop screen. There’s no way I want to wait a week for the TV airing.

It’s entirely possible that I’m misremembering, but I *think* if you watch it via the catch up option on a Sky or Virgin viewing box, the quality was pretty good. If you’re just streaming from the site/app though I don’t know.

Unfortunately, I have Freesat which until a month ago didn’t even carry Dave. Last year the only way for me to see them at all was through the UKTV website. My housemate won’t watch “that childish shit” so I’m restricted to online viewing :(

Um…why would the compositing be done in an old-fashioned way? That makes no sense.

It’s so OBVIOUSLY greenscreen though, and totally at odds with anything else we’ve seen in the Dave era – compare it to the stuff with the Universe in “Krysis”. I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t build a set or do location filming (or just have better effects) unless it was for a thematic reason, and that would make sense in an episode with a strong nostalgic element.

I’m not great at spotting these things: what makes it obvious that it’s greenscreen or makes it bad? Obviously I know that it must be a composited shot on the grounds they didn’t send them to film on the moon, but I genuinely can’t see what is worse about that shot than, say, the stuff in Dear Dave. Is there an area or join I should look at in particular that shows it off as a bad composite?

I’m not great at spotting these things: what makes it obvious that it’s greenscreen or makes it bad? Obviously I know that it must be a composited shot on the grounds they didn’t send them to film on the moon, but I genuinely can’t see what is worse about that shot than, say, the stuff in Dear Dave. Is there an area or join I should look at in particular that shows it off as a bad composite?

The wide shot isn’t so bad, but the one with the close-ups of Cat and Lister in spacesuits and the close-up of Rimmer with the obviously CGI planet… they just look so below-par for the Dave era effects work (and hugely out of place next to the gorgeous CG spaceship). Like a B-movie.

The wide shot isn’t so bad, but the one with the close-ups of Cat and Lister in spacesuits and the close-up of Rimmer with the obviously CGI planet… they just look so below-par for the Dave era effects work

Have to agree with this, the gas moon stuff looks like series VIII-level bad CGI, seems really weird when the other FX shots they feature in the trailer are so lovely and polished. Did they run out of money? Are the shots still being worked on? If this is the best it can get then they should’ve left it out of the trailer, the “so full of gas” line isn’t really worth cheapening the overall look. I’ve seen some comments that this could be intentional within the episode, even if that’s the case they should still have left it out because the trailer cannot hope to convey the proper context.

It’s weird though, I’d love to know the details on the models. The flying in space bits look pretty impressive, but the launch and some stuff last series like the escape from the exploding station, look really off. They don’t have any weight to them, they look like toys. I wonder what frame rate they film the models at.

Love the Starbug cockpit details though, and the recreation sort of, of the old Starbug table that we saw somewhere this week.

I really don’t see anything wrong with the CGI either. The only thing that might make it look a little “off” to me is probably due to the lighting, particularly in the close-up of Lister and Cat where the lack of any shadows on them as there are on the hills behind them and in subsequent shots doesn’t look quite right. I’d still consider pretty minor though, I only really notice it when I study it closely.

BTW, in case anyone’s missed it, the official HD version of the trailer is now available here.

Doctor Who has some very well done, high-quality digital mattes/CGI locations (see Skaro in the Series 9 opener), and even they can look a bit awkward and patchy with a budget that must be thousands of times higher than Dave’s. So it’s hard to be like “I want to murder Doug Naylor because he can’t composite for SHIT”, but yeah it does look a little janky.

The very same matte painting element of a big rock mountain thing is visible in all three of those outer space shots. Shades of the star background not changing between angles in the series 2 Observation Dome scenes…

It’s a shame that UKTV aren’t more clued in with keywords on youtube. A search for ‘red dwarf trailer’ doesn’t bring it up at all and ‘red dwarf 12’ only gets a hit out of luck, because one of the channels they show on is 12.

They’re really not helping themselves either, when the text within the description is all about Taskmaster!

Kryten as “Additional”; that’s obviously a fuck-up – the one prat in the promotional department who has bothered to get a hold of the scripts, do a Ctrl-F for “Full Name”, found that bit in Inquisitor…then assumed that “Additional” was his full name and “001” was his clearance code.

Errors/inconsistencies in the crew bios aside (couldn’t they have least used the same categories for each character? I like things to match!), when that trailer debuted on Dave it really blew me away. So cool. Also good to see Lister in his leather fingerless gloves again – when was the last time he wore those? BTE? In X and XI I seem to remember him wearing lots of rings instead.

Anyway, I had Dave on in the background last night in case they showed it again, but I only noticed a few instances of the short teaser version. Will they have negotiated for a certain number of times they can use the Led Zep track, like when they used James Last’s ‘Copacabana’? Or did I just miss them showing it again? Don’t know how these things work, but I really hope they keep that first version for the TV – that music adds such a lot.

There’s stuff to like in VIII, but as a whole it completely falls down. It doesn’t remotely hang together. And all the clever sci-fi the show always had before (and since) is just totally gone. Not a sign of it. The best you get is stuff like the programmable viruses, which are just used for a slapstick routine and then forgotten about. There’s no attempts made to actually analyze an idea, a philosophical concept, or a character in an intelligent way. Red Dwarf was always so good about that.

Cassandra’s the only episode that can even focus on one big idea for the whole run-time, and on the central characters without a million extras wandering around. The other episodes are all over the place, with either Pete (both parts) or Back in the Red Part 3 being the worst offender. They’re like a series of unfunny interchangeable sketches padded out beyond belief.

My opinion on VIII has grown hugely more negative since I recently rewatched it for the first time in a couple years.

Whilst we’re talking about ‘Dave-era errors’, and at the risk of seeming pedantic, after Series X Episode 1, shouldn’t the program be called SS Howard Rimmer? Or are we to assume they were winding Rimmer the fuck up??

I’d love them to do a VIII flashback just to watch the comments on here go nuclear.

It sometimes feels like even Doug is trying to ignore Series 8.

From the crew being resurrected and leaving red dwarf, to the resurrected 2nd rimmer, to the ship size changing again and barely any references to it unless its a joke aimed at the fans to shut up already.

Series 8 just probably left the show in a way that Doug just can’t be bothered to try and explain away.

It is about time we had a chat about series VIII as i don’t think this has ever happened before, and i think whilst looking at the trailer for series XII some 18 years later is the perfect time and place for it !!

Cassandra is the only episode of VIII that’s worth a carrot, IMO. Most of the other stories are all compromised to varying degrees by stretching them out into multi-parters, though there are gags I like sprinkled throughout.

That said, it’s been 18 years and I’m still not sure the “Kryten figured it out” resolution for Cassandra actually works.

I remember when I first discovered Red Dwarf at age 11, I was convinced Series VIII was just as good as any other. In fact, I often watched it and VII more often than other series. Ouroboros was my favorite episode for a while, and I couldn’t tell the difference in quality between the opening couple scenes of Tikka – the loss of the curry, Lister’s story of bathroom antics – and something like the opening few scenes of Dimension Jump.

Later on when I first checked out the online community, I was legitimately _baffled_ at the idea that people considered VIII to have a different style of writing from the other series. Not even as much that people said it wasn’t as good, as I had a vague understanding that people tended not to like later episodes of TV shows, but baffled that it was considered to be a different style and tone from say, Series III and IV.

Keep in mind around that age I also asked my English teacher if we could read a story I wrote as a class. I did not have a very good grasp on differences in writing quality, style and especially tone as a pre-teen.

I actually blame my special love of VII and VIII as a pre-teen for a nasty habit I had for many years of always over-writing dialogue scenes in my own writing, just having characters bollock on for ages about unrelated nonsense in a way that actively derails the ongoing plot – and I also had an issue with my plots just being a series of random events happening in succession with little rhyme or reason, because I thought episodes like Pete were great.

When I was 19 I wrote what I considered to be my magnum opus – never decide you’re writing your magnum opus, for the love of God – and wouldn’t shut up about how brilliant it was until one of my most trusted friends had to give me a frank talk about how glacially slow and tedious it was. Not to hurt me, but because he wanted to prevent me the pain of hearing it from everyone else since I wouldn’t stop plugging it to my friends.

For a while I didn’t want to believe it, but in the following months I decided to directly address the problem (when I got over myself). I made a concentrated effort to try and maintain a decent, consistent pace in my writing, and especially to always make sure scenes have a reason to exist beyond listening to a character launch into a random unrelated stand up act. I feel that alone has probably helped me to improve more than anything I ever did in the decade before.

Red Dwarf taught me the importance of three dimensional characters in comedy from a young age, but its worst episodes inferred upon me some extremely bad writing habits that took many years to escape.